Moth Ch. 009

Lei spread her new wings and glided down to her unused winter-hole. Flying with her new wings was indescribable. It was as if the air itself had become an extension of her body, and yet not. It was as if she had been a cripple her whole life and was now suddenly whole, and yet not.

However wonderful her new wings were, she needed to dress before the spider returned. He was, after all, a man.

She found one of last year's thongs. That would still fit. Thongs always fit. If they didn't, all you had to do was retie the knots. Last year's breasthiders, however, were hopeless. Her breasts had filled and rounded very nicely in the cocoon.

Oli would have liked them. Of course, he would have liked them no matter how they had turned out.

Thinking of Oli made her sad. It always did. Whenever she saw something nice, whenever she felt like smiling, she'd wish he was there and her joy would fade. Maybe she was lucky that she hadn't had much to smile for since he died.

Lei found the old lizard hide. She hadn't yet used half of it. It had wintered well. Out of the hide she cut herself a breasthider. Then she peered out of her hole. Black was still nowhere to be seen. Still naked she snuck out of her hole and flew off to find some water and a rock. She had to clean the old thong and the new breasthider before she could wear them.

When she returned to Black's tree, she found him hiding below some spring light-green leaves, on one of his usual branches.

"Where have you been?" she asked, practically floating. With her new wings, she could hang almost absolutely still in the air.

"That's none of your business," snarled Black.

"You almost cost me my wings," snapped Lei. "You had me trapped inside your winter-hole." She hadn't intended to bring it up. She had had no business being in his hole in the first place. "What were you thinking webbing me in?" Now that she had begun, she couldn't stop. "Do you have any clue how..."

Her tirade became a scream as the spider leapt at her and caught her mid-air. The incredible force of his momentum pushed both of them through the air with more speed than she could fly. It was nothing like flying. It was worse than falling. And Lei had her back to the direction they were headed.

They went straight into a web but kept moving, stretching the elasticity of the web till it refused to stretch further. During Lei's short involuntary backwards flight, the wind had forced her wings forward to the point of hugging her assailant. When the web stopped the backward movement of her body, her wings continued it, till they too slammed into the net --spread wide as if she was in flight.

Having been stretched, the web had to recoil and swung back, overswung, returned, and again overswung. Lei, stuck to the web as she was, was swung back and forth with the oscillations. She kept screaming till the web's movement had quieted to something akin to that of a waterlily leaf.

"You," snarled Black, as soon as she went quiet. "You have no..." He went quiet and slowly extended his legs, raising himself backward away from her into the free air behind him. "You are..." His black face was contorted into a rage the like of which Lei had never seen. "You!"

Lei wanted to flee. But both her wings and her backside was fullsidedly stuck to the web.

Lei went quiet. Her breaths were so fast and shallow that the air barely made it down her throat before it was pushed back out.

"I ought to..." began Black, again.

Lei shook her head the backside of which was stuck to the web. She didn't want to know what he ought to do.

"You'll enjoy it, Lei," said Black, his voice suddenly even. "My poison will see to that." He bared his teeth at her, displaying two perfectly white rows. The top row was on each side cornered by a sharp fang.

Lei recognised the distance between the marks on the long dead lizard's hide and whimpered.

For a second the spider remained absolutely still, his breath alternately warm and cold against the side of her bared throat. Then, with a jump that sent the web into fresh wild oscillations, he was gone.

In a crazed frenzy, Kokata jumped from branch to branch fleeing their tree and Lei's helplessly immobile body. He had almost... He had almost... The strain of jumping far and fast wasn't enough. Every part of him was aflame. His body refused to tire.

He had almost...

His feet slipped on an unexpectedly slick surface and for a moment he fell, his high shot to new levels at the near death experience, and when he landed safely on another branch he was even further gone from reason.

He could still do it! He could return and...

He forced himself to jump further away. He couldn't allow himself to pause. If he stopped to think his desire would win. The voice of reason had been barely a whisper. He had almost...

The girl had thought he was going to eat her. Kokata laughed madly while soaring through the air in an insane far jump from a high branch to a lower one. Eat her. That thought had never even crossed his mind. Taste her, maybe. Couldn't avoid a taste when biting. But sucking her dry had never been his intention. Her blood was not what he wanted.

He had almost...

At first he had just been furious. As far as he had meant to do anything at all, he had meant to scare her and take revenge for her cruel, selfish behaviour. But then he had felt the heat of her body and his fury had changed to something more.

He had almost...

A part of him, the biggest part of him, still wished he had. It would have been good, even for her. Once she had his poison in her she wouldn't complain, not for a moment.

If he had bit, he wouldn't have been able to stop. He still had no clue how he had managed to stop when he had.

She had had no right to yell at him. After everything she had put him through. All those months of caring for her, fearing for her, and then the first thing she had done was complain. He ought to turn back and do it. He had earned the right.

Submitted to literotica.com by the author.

He wished for the voice of reason to grow louder. Yet it still remained the tiniest of whispers.

"For you it was months, for her it was one long nap." The words were torn from his mouth even as he spoke them out loud. It didn't help at all. It still sounded like a far off tiny whisper.

"You can't do something like that to a woman," said Kokata to himself.

He couldn't hear his own words, for the wind against his jumps. They didn't make sense anyway. He could do something like that to a woman. All he had to do to do it was return to the web and the woman who was in it.

Kokata laughed again. It would be very easy to do it. He landed again, instead of jumping for a new branch he gasped for air. His legs were shaking below him. Yet every fiber in his body wanted him to jump again, only in the opposite direction.

"You can't do something like that to Lei." The forest was very quiet and his voice was very clear. Even if it did shake.

He sank his body down on the branch.

He had almost...

He had to return. He couldn't leave her unguarded. Not the way he had webbed her. A spider-beast might come by.

He couldn't return. The state he was in he might still... He had to get out of that state.

Kokata rolled to his back; softened the clingers on his legs; parted the plates covering the part that burned harder than any other; and did that thing which he had learned to do many years back. While he did it he thought of all the things he had almost done.

It didn't take long.

Lei had spat her mouth dry, but her spit had absolutely no effect on the web. Her stomach was back to normal; none of the silk dissolving acid was left.

A tiny part of her kept insisting that Black had no intention of harming her; that he was just showing off. Lei figured it was the same part of her that had kept insisting Oli would make it.

Some part of her just always had to believe that everything would be right again. But life wasn't fair. She had just been reborn and already she was on the verge of death.

She had seen Black kill things bigger and stronger than her with more ease than she could pick a berry. She should have known better than to treat him like a person. A spider with mind. He was Death incarnate.

Lei wept with fear, and again tugged her wrists against the silk.

From his hiding place, Kokata watched over the woman in his web. She was crying. He needed to go down there and cut her free, but he still hadn't figured out what to say to her.

What if she just flew away?

He had waited too long for her to just leave.

While she had been cocooned, he had never realised that a web-tunnel would keep her trapped. His concern had been to keep things out.

For a brief moment he fantasised of shoving her into his lair and webbing her in. The fantasy shattered on its own accord. Lei was crying and he couldn't stand it. It was like a sling inside his body tightening around his vocal cords and windpipe.

Kokata left his hiding place and hurried to his web. As soon as he stepped onto it, Lei spun her face to him and shrieked. A short startled shriek. Kokata grimaced and stopped in his tracks. He hadn't meant to startle her further.

He opened his mouth to say something soothing.

"Don't piss yourself, Scrawny," snarled Kokata.

That was not what he had meant to say.

"You're too bloody stupid for your own good," said Kokata, again approaching Lei. This was how he talked to strangers who were so dumb to fly into his webs. This was not how he had intended to talk to Lei. "How did you get it into your mind to cocoon yourself in a spider's lair?"

Kokata cut the silk around Lei's wrists, first the one... "You crawl into a spider's lair." then the other... "You take a five month nap." He moved to her feet. "Then you wake up, and..." With a snap, Kokata cut the silk around her one ankle, "... complain about the web." He cut the silk around the other ankle.

Kokata pulled Lei's legs off the web and cut a big hole in the web where they had been.

"Just what did you expect to find around a spider's lair?" he snarled. "Clots of honey?"

Lei said nothing, but she had stopped crying.

"Termite moss?" suggested Kokata and released her legs to dangle in free air.

Kokata started cutting two out of every three strands connected to the web Lei's wings were connected to. This web was nearly perfectly vertical. If he simply released her, she would fall into the lower half of the web and get stuck again.

"I was raised by beetles," said Kokata. "How was I supposed to know what to do with a cocoon?"

"You don't do anything with a cocoon." Lei's voice was low and only slightly shaky.

Kokata cut more strands.

"You scared me," said Lei.

Kokata didn't look at her face, but there was something tentative about the way she said it, as if it was a test. He had no clue what he needed to do to pass it.

"At least you didn't piss yourself," he snarled.

Lei made a strange snorting sound and Kokata turned his face to her. Her lips were tight together, her face moved in the strangest grimaces. Another snort escaped her nose before she covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders were shaking.

"Crybaby," said Kokata. That absolutely wasn't the word of comfort he had meant to offer.

Another snort escaped from behind Lei's hands, and then came a series of sounds that couldn't be mistaken for sobbing. She was laughing.

Kokata held on to Lei while cutting the last strands. With two legs he carried Lei, with two others he kept her wings from the web, and with four he crawled up till they were safely on a branch.

"Keep your wing's stretched," he instructed. "The web is still sticky."

It took a while to cut every strand on Lei's wings and back, and would take even longer to cover every sticky spot with dry silk. Maybe the remedy wasn't absolutely necessary, but Kokata couldn't bear the thought of his web causing the first tears in Lei's new wings.